“We used the ‘habitable zone’ concept to make these estimates — this is the distance from a planet’s star at which temperatures are conducive to having liquid water on the surface,” said Andrew Rushby from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences, who led the research.

“We used stellar evolution models to estimate the end of a planet’s habitable lifetime by determining when it will no longer be in the habitable zone.

The Icarus effect

“We estimate that Earth will cease to be habitable somewhere between 1.75 and 3.25 billion years from now. After this point, Earth will be in the ‘hot zone’ of the sun, with temperatures so high that the seas would evaporate. We would see a catastrophic and terminal extinction event for all life.

“Of course conditions for humans and other complex life will become impossible much sooner — and this is being accelerated by anthropogenic climate change,” the researchers suggest.

“Humans would be in trouble with even a small increase in temperature, and near the end, only microbes in niche environments would be able to endure the heat.”

If we ever needed to move to another planet, Mars is probably our best bet, said Rushby. “It’s very close and will remain in the habitable zone until the end of the Sun’s lifetime — six billion years from now.”

Estimating the potential for evolution of complex life

“Looking back a similar amount of time, we know that there was cellular life on earth. We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.

“The amount of habitable time on a planet is very important because it tells us about the potential for the evolution of complex life — which is likely to require a longer period of habitable conditions.

“Looking at habitability metrics is useful because it allows us to investigate the potential for other planets to host life, and understand the stage that life may be at elsewhere in the galaxy.

“Of course, much of evolution is down to luck, so this isn’t concrete, but we know that complex, intelligent species like humans could not emerge after only a few million years because it took us 75 per cent of the entire habitable lifetime of this planet to evolve. We think it will probably be a similar story elsewhere.”

Almost 1,000 planets outside our solar system have been identified by astronomers. The research team looked at some of these as examples, and studied the evolving nature of planetary habitability over astronomical and geological time.

“Interestingly, not many other predictions based on the habitable zone alone were available, which is why we decided to work on a method for this. Other scientists have used complex models to make estimates for the Earth alone, but these are not suitable for applying to other planets.

“We compared Earth to eight planets which are currently in their habitable phase, including Mars. We found that planets orbiting smaller mass stars tend to have longer habitable zone lifetimes.

“One of the planets that we applied our model to is Kepler 22b, which has a habitable lifetime of 4.3 to 6.1 billion years. Even more surprising is Gliese 581d, which has a massive habitable lifetime of between 42.4 to 54.7 billion years. This planet may be warm and pleasant for 10 times the entire time that our solar system has existed!

“To date, no true Earth analogue planet has been detected. But it is possible that there will be a habitable, Earth-like planet within 10 light-years, which is very close in astronomical terms. However reaching it would take hundreds of thousands of years with our current technology.

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Comments (48)

We’ll be long gone before the Earth reaches its end, a temporary aberation in the evolution of life that didn’t make it, but did a lot of damage before finally making itself extinct. Evolution will clear up.

Why are you so obsessed with ‘leftists’ whatever they are? Do you see everything in these simplistic terms? A handy formula to explain everything and reject arguments you don’t have a counter argument for?

If “we” (including whoever you like) survive through the next century, another billion years should give us time to evolve, especially since humans evolve faster culturally than genetically. It may be a matter of finding and getting to another, younger, sun.

But there’s also another issue, of which I don’t know the timeline. Water in the upper atmosphere is often broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by the sun’s UV light. The hydrogen, being light, is often knocked into space, leaving excess oxygen. Can you guess what it’s likely to oxidize first? Carbon, which most earth life finds valuable. Plants think CO2 is tasty, but we’re finding that it can be a problem in more ways than one.

I was following you ‘up to the atmosphere’ (lol) hydrogen thing.. (though I’m not sure this has any importance, if the loss ratio was significant wouldn’t we be out of hydrogen already?)
But then you lost me when making me guess something completely unrelated.. “first” among what? any element?

ohwait, are you also referring to global warming? gee people, don’t worry, when I manage to usurp every atom and quark for computation you will “live” in a dream world (albeit a more pleasant one) while the true intelligence will manage all that messy reality issues for you. Carbon, Earth, or anything for that “matter” ;-), will be a mere figment of your virtual imagination.

As aezel has brilliant put it below, although perhaps for different reasons but as most articles here, this is all of the utmost uber irrelevance.

Yep. It is called Trolling.
But instigation is different than mastication. It typically try to hide the source.
Anyway, I was referring to this prediction:

“so again we are going to have a fierce debate between”
+
“Great. The great unresolvable debate that is a carte blanche for insults back and forth.”

And not the topic of such a “debate” itself. Not to mention it could still be an insult to “the intelligence” of readers :-)

Well, maybe you were trying to reply to some post below instead of creating a new “thread” on this article, which would only goes to show, to some around here, how context is important for understanding. Unless they don’t want understanding of course, which is more like it.

If it were 1988 and I would be predicting the end of the soviet union I am sure the leadership of the communist party would denounce such statements in the harshest possible terms. Wouldn’t make it any less relevant.

errr…. is this a monologue I’ve just broke into? If so let me just express my sincere hopes that all you old beople figure out actually effective skin treatments real soon. That should make your particular case a little more interesting.

But in case this is not a scripted response and there are actual non-silica on the other side, let me instead just echo back your own echoes to you, from a couple sentences before: You do not regard the US “of consequence” — a synonym for relevance — and even used the soviet union itself as example. So yeah, nothing can “make it any less relevant” since it is already at the bottom of the relevance scale, and you said it yourself. :-)

Now if you excuse me something urges me to pull huge pieces of iron for intellectual stimulation (still not an insult, contrary to popular belief it not only makes oxygenation more efficient but also saturates the energy machinery electron carriers, nad+, and proton pumps for maximum capacity. Your monologue does a better job at this, so your prediction — the one I referred to — did came true after all, as it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, rejoice)

Love to hear what their predictions are for humans to survive…. could we guess 700 million or so? I am guessing we create some clever space shield that deflects heat away from the earth, or that steals solar energy and then beams it back to earth for free unlimited power for the next 2 billions years. (assuming there is no mass extinction meteor event first, or zombie apocalypse, or nuking, or dozen other what ifs)

Remember also that it took us 4.3 billion years to develop life this complex on earth and without the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, we might still be just lizards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event What if life on most planets never get started as they don’t get enough energy from red dwarf stars…so life never takes off beyond the mold/microbe level? What if on most life on planets in habitable zone around yellow stars normally start just a billions years later and thus never mature in time before their oceans burn off? How rare is the fact that the Earth has a Moon as big as it is (maybe this helped with tides and mixing of early chemicals in the oceans that made all the difference?) maybe the Mars sized planet that ripped into earth to form the moon carried with it critical elements needed to form early life on Earth and thus we got a special head start. Maybe the slow advancement of life on earth is Much, Much faster than on other planets due to a strange, but lucky combination of goldilox like conditions that acts just like the power of compound interest does *(except this is billions of years). What if that critical difference is like how an extra 2% grows over 40 years to a 401K account ( x4.3 billion years).

Love these conversations that question how rare life is on Earth vs. other planets in the Universe. Yeah, I know there are billions and billions of other places life could be…. but what if we are not alone, but first by a few billion years? I can’t help but spread this Rare earth hypothesis idea that this article seems to help confirm (small window of time for advanced life to be created and then advance off the planet to survive long term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

Good point that Earth is, most likely, highly unusual. Also a good reason to discard the ridiculous idea that we could just move civilization to Mars. It’s an uninhabitable ball of rock, too small for an atmosphere and devoid of a magnetic field (for radiation shielding). Better bet just to move the Earth.

But, nah, I disagree Earth is that unusual. Slightly weird yes, but not that rare. GatorALLin have too many assumptions. 4.3 billion years for “life this complex” is not only vague, it is quite wrong. Life goes way back from the official “fossil record”, it just hadn’t left any “fossils”! hard shells and bones were a somewhat recent invention in the big scheme of things, the latest development of an already ongoing arms race.

As for “complex” or “intelligence” (or what “sapiens” call intelligence), in fact earth is quite late. Were it not for giant lizards holding mammals back, or for them in turn being suddenly interrupted by a surprise meteor so soon, cleverness could’ve showed up way earlier.

I thought H.G. Wells had already handled (or at least described) that “hot-zone” situation in “The Time Machine.” Wikipedia calls this 1895 book an “early example of the Dying Earth subgenre.” Ah,, well, Wells expected this to happen in 802,701 A.D. That’s a very long way before these scientists’ confidence interval – maybe Wells was attempting to account for climate warming as well.

Sometime in the not too distant future there will have been created an “absolute number” of humans that can survive on this planet. Whether than number is 10 billion or 50 billion or something else, I don’t know. Some say we have already surpassed it at 7 billion, and that there should not be more than 1 billion or 5 billion humans in existence at one time. Time will certainly tell on this issue. The possibility that the earth could be moved to a larger orbit in order to survive the expanding and eventual super nova in order to buy another billion years or so of habitation is an intruiging one.

@sunny:
Something is considered radical when it addresses fundamental issues, because it goes to the “roots of things.” The word radical is derived from the Latin “radix” meaning root, origin, or source. That’s the denotational meaning.You use the connotational meaning to imply it is something bad, but in the end you’re doing the very same thing.

Almost everyone who accuses someone of radicalism does so out of his very own radicalism.This must be so, because most people use this loaded word only when they have their have own, differing opinions on the matters at hand, or at least feel bothered by the positions stated.So, you act like a hypocrite if you denounce the radicalism of someone else if you hold your own opinions on those subjects, which you evidently do (if you wouldn’t have any conscious opinions but attack views stated by someonen else, you’d defacto be defending the status quo, which would substitute/constitute your opinion).

Now, some people consider “not being part of the mainstream” to be a requirement for a radical ideology.History shows, that this is relative, and that the majority is mostly wrong on everthing.But, this doesn’t even matter in this case because…

Malthusianism is very radical,fulfilling this criterion with ease.It was born in the mind of someone who held sense-independent supernatural beliefs stemming from a metaphysical system devised by ancient nomads.A system which labels and prescribes punishment for many things that are part of human nature, making the punishment and resulting control over the punished by the punishing inevitable… if followed thoroughly.

Unfortunately, the almighty deity from which this “morality” is allegedly derived needs someone to speak for “it”, who benevolently sacrifices his soul… for he has to endure the material payoff that his position in society entails, which is something very bad according to scripture.Poor, fattened priest.And his health…What a hero!

One should be wary if such a person, who can substitute the “moral” scribbles of ancient nomads for reason at any time, makes predictions which fit the doomsday visions that he supposes to be his salvation.

Your Malthusian nonsense never held true before, and the predictions of the “CoR” got pushed back again and again, in time.

They are mostly based on fallaciously presuming our economies to be SOLELY based on scarce resources, and they also presume the state of things to be static, not factoring in any future technological change (how likely is it that the world some of us will live in, in forty years, will be a linear projection of today?).I consider that organization a for-profit business, that would predict their way of behavior almost perfectly.

To translate an expression I’d use in my language: It is truly a belief-system for “concreteheads.” Very close-minded, not moved by evidence, having the (another concept from my culture) infamous “resistance to learning”, probably because the concrete isn’t malleable anymore, after some time passed.

The “Club of Rome” is a bad joke, and an insult to the real thinkers who where born and breed, or lived in that city.

Calculus has been invented to measure change.If you take a system, and describe it mathematically, even slight differences in the variables can lead to a highly different path.”Visualizing” the math makes this -literally- obvious.

Completely irrelevant. We will most likely have the engineering capability of actually moving the planet around in the next few thousand years. We will definitely be able to put Earth wherever we want it in 1.25 billion years.

irrelevant yes, but only because it’s a physical object. He who value only physical things only values a subset of reality. All things are informational, thus we value the information of the thing not the thing it’s self. Show me a thing that has value other then it’s informational properties, and I will show you a property that is undefined and undefinable.

The problem is in the mentality of people in general. A total disregard for the ramifications of their actions. My shop is on a busy street corner. While people are stopped at the light, they throw their trash away. I sometimes line up the beer, wine, and alcohol bottles. They don’t care that tgey litter. They don’t care if they are drinking and driving. They are oblivious of their responsibilities to others and themselves. It’s incidious, and affects everything. Mankinds inhumanity to other people and their own environs. Just toss it out the window and the problems gone. People and their comments are equally subject to this, out of sight, out of mind mentality. Trouble is, just because you’ve deleted it from your world, doesn’t mean the problem is solved. It’s just so much easier to not worry about the problems. “It’s not my problem, now it’s someone elses problem”. Just shove it under the rug.

In reality it all comes back to you. More of that Yin andYang stuff. We are bound to each other. There is great responsibility in even just being alive. Everything affects everything else. The sooner we learn to see how we are affecting each other, the sooner we can resolve these issues. I don’t think humans have the will to do it. I’m putting my hopes in VIKI. People are way too irrational.

Oh lordy, an article on KurzweilAI again makes an argument for “antropogenic climate change”, so again we are going to have a fierce debate between

- people with a political conviction slanted to “the right” and “capitalism” and “corporations” and “freedom fries” who’ll ague there’s no such thing

- beople with a political conviction slanted to “the left” and “human rights” and “librulism” and “leftist terrorists” who will argue yes, antropgenic human induced change of the climate is real and it exists.

Great. The great unresolvable debate that is a carte blanche for insults back and forth. Where perfectly credible arguments are brought to bear that libruls and socialists are all anti-business scum. And where wingnuts and libertards are all paid by oil companies and mossad to argue online oil is good for your skin

Responding to Bri’s response to SunTzu, as well as to SunTzu – there is a significant lack of responsibility development in our schooling. The people whom Bri observes discarding trash on the street are behaving in a significantly irresponsible way; however, they are evidently not well schooled in the consequences of their actions.

SunTzu’s “right-vs-left” description actually does not address the root cause of the conflict she calls “neanderthal” – it lies in the assumption on the part of the left that responsibility must be legislated to be accepted, and on the part of the right that the grant of that authority to the State to so legislate rather than restricting it to the individual who on maturity behaves “morally” leads to an uncontrollable growth and consequently unavoidable result in tyranny. Steven Covey suggested, on the occasion of his publishing “The Eight Habit [of highly effective people],” that we should erect a “Statue of Responsibility” on the West Coast bookending the USA along with the Statue of Lliberty. Liberty without responsibility is “neanderthal” – i.e. unsupported by a reasonable grasp of social responsibility beyond the tribe; and personal responsibility enforced democratically by legislation leads to the “tyranny of the majority”.

It strikes me that before we can worry about moving the Earth out beyond Mars (but of course we would have to move Mars out of the way first – or at least in the process), we have to learn how to bound our local cultural mores in ways that do not create cross-community conflicts, without at the same time unduly restricting individuals to a particular catechism.

I was particularly impressed, in this regard, with John Lamb Lash’s “pagan” restatement of the Golden Rule: “Do NOT unto others what you would NOT have them do unto you.” This restatement allows personal defilement without making it a public responsibility to control, thereby allowing individuals to take more responsibility for themselves.

I am perfectly confident that who can tend to take responsibility just fine. Quite often these people become their brothers keepers in stride. Instinctively so I might add.

The problem however is with people who can’t take responsibility. The human state is frail. It is all to easy for the hubritic to relegate an unfair burden of self-determination with others. This is a moral tragedy of the commons where the successful scurry forward to blame any victims they can find for all the ills in the world.

This is rather pertinent to the vitriolic human-made global warming debate. The majority of CO2 and Methane exhausts are triggered by economic and survival necessities. People who cause this damage don’t have much of an alternative.

That’s why I am in favor of a strong, responsible and competent governance. Because we humans tend to be individually stupid, shortsighted, dogmatic and under-informed. You can’t be responsible as a single person – individuals are driven by self-interest and even a flock of self-interested “responsible” pigeons will shit all over your car.

What it boils down to is greater awareness on the part of both sides. Governance and those governed. This is happening slowly. Monty Python used to spoof on this often in their work. There would be peasants talking political ideologies while working in the fields. As time has gone by we have a better sense governance and it’s relation to the people.

To tell the truth, I think this topic of each individuals place in society, is the most important topic. It will set the template for AGI’s relation to mankind. Everything affects everything else. Everyone really needs to be more mindful of their effects on everything. The question becomes, what do I want out of life, and how does that effect the world. It’s not an isolated question, to be asked once and forgotten. It’s really a question that should influence everything that you do. We don’t live in a bubble. There is no such thing as natural liberties. All liberties are civil liberties. It’s up to us to understand how these function.

Part of being “our brother’s keeper” includes informing him of the needs of the community. We cannot just assume that everyone will be responsible; you are quite right about that. Those who cannot be taught must be restrained. But pushing the restraints up further and further through the various levels of government results in more and more diversion from the original goals and more and more just plain naked power at the top.

The problem with a “strong, responsible and competent governance” is that it is run by people who, unfortunately, are contained in the “human state” which, as you accurately noted, is “frail”. This is exhibited by the corruption we all see in our “governance” at all levels. And it multiplies further, the further it is away from those whose votes choose “the lesser of two evils” – ignoring the fact that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Th. Jefferson famously said “Let us not depend on trust in men, but bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.” Those chains started breaking the year Jefferson left the Presidency – and some would argue even sooner.

The “vitriolic” debate over global warming would be a very healthy exercise, but for the attempts on both sides to rule it by legislation rather than reason. Whether or not it global warming is indeed extensively anthropogenic, developing the science necessary to learn how to manage our human community in its continuing partnership with all the rest of our lonely planet’s ecology remains an ongoing task. I’m quite confident all the readership of kurzweilai.net would agree with that.

The “pigeons” are responsible to their community, not mine. I am responsible for caring for my car.

An easy – though perhaps crude – measure of the corruption in US government is the amount of money paid to lobbyists. It has skyrocketed in the past two decades.

Lobbyists!!! Now that’s a job with job security! Can’t automate it with robots. No amount of AGI will ever affect it. It’s just unadulterated greed. Plain , pure and simple. Betcha a billion years from now theyll still be around.

I have heard evidence that at least two moderators of major transhumanist forums of facebook are paid by the oil industry to invariably attack, discredit and ridicule topics such as man-made global warming, peak oil, “socialism” .. islam, obama etc.

People like you are the reason why I consider leaving Europe behind.Some ‘tough love’: The reason why you are where you are is partly because of your victim mentality.And yes, this is also based on other comments from you that I read (although I don’t know the particulars, so you should not be upset by any seemingly unfair or harsh words that I write).

Kant wrote: “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude!”

I am not saying you’re not intelligent.. I just guess you’re well below your potential.Although, in a sense, that is being unintelligent..it is a matter of degree.

Anyway: Most people don’t even try to do something about their problems -or for themselves- and find excuses instead, all the while yelling for their nanny-state to come take care of everything.

They feel threatened by the individual who can or wants to think for himself, and when their disastrous systems finally and predictably fail, they want to force everyone they can into those systems to sustain them for some more years,dragging out the suffering for everyone involved, and burdening everyone with the consequences of their own stupidity (especially when all this garbage comes crushing down).Yeah, in a sense I am talking about most countries in Europe.

So, about leftists: I don’t need uneducated, pre-enlightenment minds to tell me what is right, what is proper, and how to live.

Btw: Your comment about Neanderthals leads me to believe (but not only based on this of course) that you think in abstract, superficial stereotypes,and are not really questioning your beliefs and intentions at all*.

It is surprising how much flak the poor Neanderthals get, especially in Europe, where there is the highest concentration of their genes in the species called “Homo Sapiens” (what an arrogant name^^).

*Anyway:This can be seen as a form of laziness, should it be true.And only one of us should have to face the consequences of that behavior.Responsibility to the responsible.

*One could say this means nothing, but I think we have a tendency to let our behavior in one field spill over to others, or to write an aphorism: “How you do one thing is how you do all things.”

So you name yourself after Sun Tzu?Do you think he would drown himself in self-pity, or would he get that water out of his eyes and take a clear look at the situation?

“The problem however is with people who can’t take responsibility.”

Besides the mentally/bodily ill, prove to me that someone can’t take responsibility.
-They ‘fail’ you say?So what?Life is not perfectly predicable, and equality of opportunity doesn’t equal equality of outcome.

-We all know the world is changing constantly… what are most people doing to keep up with it?Nothing?Their problem.

-Studied something worthless at the university of your choice?You were old enough to decide that yourself, your problem.

Besides, I think society should be more tolerant towards business AND failure.Only those “experts of redistribution” are stopping this, with their central planning based on static economical models, needing to squeeze what “tangible stuff” they already ‘have’ in front of them, so that they can buy votes again to finance their own luxuries through taxes that other people HAVE to pay (if the state pays your salary, you’re -to me- not much different from someone living on well-fare).

Now, you could say it is right to give someone who seemingly is in need, but that’s arguable.Furthermore, a “virtue” enforced is none.And: Do two wrongs (his need and me being forced) equal one right?

And even if someone can’t take responsibility, what’s that to me? You people speak about solidarity, but that’s not a one way track!What do you have to offer?Nothing.And even if you had something, shouldn’t this “union” be based on voluntary entry?

If it is not, you’re just as amoral as those who you speak against, who are “successful” etc.. because almost everything you demand can be predicted by your self-interests, and the form of delivery can be predicted if you add the modifiers of “pointing fingers,” “denial,” “entitlement”, and “Moralism.”

One main difference between these groups I speak about is: The people you want to rob actually produce a value, a significant value.Maybe you should teach basic economics in your brainlaundries.I learned almost nothing of value back then, and all of it could have been learned faster autodidactically.

On a side note: Public schools are an utter waste of time, forced on people so that they grow dependent and loyal to authority, and to the abstract entities called “state” and “society”, whose only reality is in the heads of the believers and those who represent them outside of people’s heads,those who use them mainly to reap what others sow. Oh well, at least they succeed in teaching the need to be taught…

To use H.L.Menckens terminology:
Majority of voters and politicians= jackasses and jackals.

“where the successful scurry forward to blame any victims they can find for all the ills in the world.”

Most successful people are too busy ‘forging’ their success. This “guilt/blame based thinking” is mostly found in two groups: The “lower classes “(instead of taking a meta-perspective and asking themselves what they could do better, and what they should do, and where their part-which they can control- lies in their situation—they search for a scapegoat), and Statist parasites (e.g politicians and people working for the government, they need to keep buying votes etc, that’s why they need scapegoats if something is less than perfect. To secure their “funds”).

Both of these groups are also adept at finding problems where there are none.The world is highly complex and ever changing, and you want an equilibrium where your particular brand of equality is, if possible, chiseled into the very fabric of reality?

If you have a real problem, whatever you perceive to be so, do something.If you can’t, it would be better to focus on things about which you can do something.If everyone would do this, much of your problems would dissolve almost over night.That’s the way to maximize your “utility”, to introduce some terminology.

My alternative to your politics: The state should be reduced to a minimum.It should -maybe- provide some security (inner and outer), -maybe- some important infrastructure (water, energy, NOT the internet [can't trust them]), -maybe- offering free education (as in high quality autodidactic resources, and maybe enforcing some standards like everyone should be able to read, else other states could become stronger in the longer run and take away our self-determination).That’s it.

“an unfair burden of self-determination with others. ”
Burdening me with the failures of others is what’s truly unfair.You have no right to the possessions and lives of others (which you defacto claim, for they have to work with time and resources for time and resources [etc], which you take away).The only way you can take dominion over them is by force, and you’d be no better than your “opponents,” which you accuse of doing so.

If you want to have any right besides the right of the strong, you have to base it on mutual consent.I never entered into any contract with someone like you, we have nothing to do with each other, why should I be forced to sustain you?

If you think you can make something moral just by jotting down some lines justifying your lust for other people’s possessions, then the only thing that can back this is force.If that’s the morality according to which you live, then please don’t hypocritically cry out for your “rights” if you’re on the weaker side.That’s either disgusting and dishonest, or unaware.If it is unaware, then you have found the major reason why you’re neither where you want to be in your life, nor going there anytime soon.Then I would have to quote Kant again… if it is not unawareness, you would be a hypocrite and a dumb Machiavellian (all the bad things of it, and none of the “useful/good”, basically in intent).

Instead of going all Neofeudal-leftist (notice how all those societies still have enormous inequality and elites, mostly based on “party belonging” and heritage) we should:

Encourage the free market and science, to keep on accumulating wealth and technologies until said wealth becomes sustainable (through more economically technologies, and new reservoirs of resources opened up, gaining at the very least time for even more economical technologies) and until the world is so rich that everyone can have his own place, and basic stuff like computers etc just from the crumbs of such a society (e.g the singularity might take care of such things, if you’re one of the believers[^^] you should think about that).We should encourage growth opportunities, and encourage equality of opportunity for everyone.

Now, jealousy concerning wealth is primarily based on relative poverty.If no one is ‘objectively’ poor, e.g all lower needs on Maslow’s pyramid are fulfilled so that people can dedicate themselves to the loftier parts of the human condition…. then they should get free courses on self-control.Combined with equal opportunity, they should have nothing to really complain about.

Some might like being greedy, or like to complain, or etc.. in which case they can be safely ignored (or must be punished if they cause problems.)

Without capitalism, which is based mainly on the right to property, you have much less wealth, and accumulate less wealth, the remainder of which would be in the hands of some ‘elites’ inheriting it/getting it by force alone.Is that what you want?

” Because we humans tend to be individually stupid, shortsighted, dogmatic and under-informed.

Swarm intelligence applies mostly to insects (and other primitive life forms).It is all the rage now, but the norm in humans is still swarm stupidity.

A collective produces an average, which can never beat the outliers on either side.Therefore, your “rule of the majority” means some individuals have to be ruled by their inferiors.And those are the individual which are the most productive.The ungrateful, greedy, and self-serving morality of mediocrity.Disgusting.

“You can’t be responsible as a single person individuals are driven by self-interest ”
How do you know?Speaking about yourself?

And every government is made by and filled with people driven by self-interest.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with self-interest per se.It is your self-interest that makes you want others to take care of you.Now that’s disgusting.

—–
To paraphrase myself: The state should be reduced to a minimum:Maybe some Security (inner and outer), maybe some important infrastructure (water, energy, NOT the internet [can't trust them]), maybe offering free education..as in high quality autodidactic resources and enforcing some standard requirements.. like everyone should be able to read.That’s it.Oh, and maybe some science (some large scale projects might take up enormous resources but would be profitable…e.g maybe nanotechnology, I think Drexler wrote about this [a Manhattan-Project-style push for nanotechnology])…

Right on Mr. X!!! If we had more economic and personnel freedom (i.e.: less government.) We would all be immensely richer.

When people are free to keep the profits from their work, they want more profits, they work harder, smarter, faster. We get new industries, increased productivity, more people and resources being employed more productively. Instead the U.S. is going in exactly the opposite direction — central planning (ala the USSR, Cuba, North Korea…) Government restricts free enterprise, drains resources (people, capital…) into non-productive areas.
Our “education” (indoctrination) system costs us more per student than any other, yet test scores continues to fall year after year compared to the rest of the world. We went from first to, what is it now, 28th(?) in the world. Introduce competition – allow parents to put their kids in better (non-union/non-government controlled) schools and watch the costs plummet and the scores sky-rocket.

As we’ve become more socialist, our country has gone from about 3/4 of the world’s economy to approximately ¼ – in about 50 years. We are 3x less relevant, less powerful than we were. As socialism continues to increase, we will continue to decline. Socialism makes countries poor, free-enterprise capitalism makes them rich. It’s logical, and if you look around the world and throughout history, it’s always been this way. This used to be the country everyone wanted to come to – we were making the huge scientific and economic advances. Our standard of living increased every year, per capita income increased every year. But now we are stagnating, declining; and fewer intelligent, hard-working, freedom loving people want to come to this country.
Now fewer than half of the working age Americans work. The rest are told they are victims, and rather than achieving their own success, they want to blame others for their failures — and worse yet, reach into other people’s pockets and take what they won’t earn for themselves. We pay people not to work and to have children they can’t afford. It’s not hard to understand why we are failing.
It’s time to think logically, think for yourselves — please – before it’s too late! (Personally, I think it’s probably already is too late. We will become poorer, and poorer, and irrelevant, at the mercy (or lack of mercy) of the economically freer countries (China?).
Socialism fails every time; we are failing…

@:witsubrene:
“and personal responsibility enforced democratically by legislation leads to the “tyranny of the majority”.”

Tyranny of the idiots is more like it, as far as the characteristics of such a majority rule are concerned.The tyranny of idiots who enforce a “morality” which is based on their lowest common denominator… the instincts common to all lazy and frightened animals (ok, more strictly speaking: higher mammals).

And how could it be otherwise?How could the majority be anything but stupid?Every “insight/idea” must come into being “locally,” and then diffuse through society, which takes time, while ‘filters’ (background, ability, agenda etc of the recipients) actively work against the spread of new knowledge (or information) and/or distort the insight in question.

Imagine this to happen thousands of times, in an ever continuing loop… some people will get lots of valuable knowledge, but they must be the minority (each filter etc decreases the probability of a given average individual to accumulate a certain amount knowledge).That’s not even taking the bell-curve into account (the distribution of intelligence probably correlates with the distribution of IQ), nor the effects of social stratification (although both could be seen as constituting several filters in this model).

Majority rule is neither any more moral than any other system, nor is it particularly meritocratic in any sense.It can be said to be “mediocratic” , and that’s not something good (at least not in my book).It could also be said to be defacto neofeudal.

Majority rule is based on coercion, and hides behind words heaped upon words, till the ‘sophistication of sophistry’ is achieved.It is telling that such a system has to take children from their parents and indoctrinate them with methods borrowed from organized religion and military institutions.Notice how some politicians push for schooling “to be applied” at an ever younger age.

Furthermore, you should not force your perceived “responsibilities” on others.Who are you to tell me how I have to live?That’s the arrogance of someone who never learned much in his life (else you’d have caught yourself having been wrong enough times to distrust your own opinions, leading you to ask: “maybe it is I who is wrong.. let’s better not take self-determination from others based on my beliefs!”).

Everyone should first and foremost mind their own business.And I am not hypocritically in saying this… I put this comment out here as a counterbalance to all those “leftist” opinions I’ve noticed.You could see it as verbal self-defense;)

“Do NOT unto others what you would NOT have them do unto you.”
What about masochistic people…?